Grinding the omega marks isn't that hard. Where I'm running into increasing difficulty is with the replicated materials and, eventually, I think, the experience points. I don't get enough of either from the STFs to sustain doing the special projects as often as possible (~20h). How do you handle getting enough of those? And do you have any insight as to why it is the price for grinding rep goes up significantly as we cross omega tiers?

I hear you saying to sit tight for season 8 and I may end up doing just that, as I have 5 other max-level characters and there simply aren't enough hours in the day to grind more than just 1 right now. Of course, others may disagree..
EB

The link in post 3 shows you all the omega rep project costs.

XP is the hardest thing for rep on new characters. It helps to understand the history of the rep system. It was added at a time when there was nothing really to do at the max level. There were stf's of a different flavor and all. But we were just killing things without direction and had quite a bit of XP hanging around. I still ahve a few million on one of my toons.

I recommend the mirror event for xp, but also anything that has a lot of team ship killing: gorn minefield, starbase 24, etc. I ope they eliminate XP from the rep system just cause a new, truly new to the game, not necessarily you, will have a problem getting enough xp for the rep.